Our baby was born. She's beautiful, healthy and awesome. Just like my other two kids, the first song she ever heard outside the womb was "I Will" by the Beatles as sung by me.

We spent the night in the hospital and my wife and I watched the Tom Petty documentary. This little girl entered the world to the Beatles and Tom Petty. My kids and I have been listening to the entire Cat Stevens catalog in heavy rotation.

you know what the fun thing about the history of Jazz is? The way I see it, it's basically the same story as classical music, condensed into 150 years or so. The story of a continued "harmonic breakdown" - basically things get more chromatic over time.

This is, of course, incredibly simplified and leaves out a lot - but the parallels are there.

We start off with a rigidly structured music, the Blues. Even though there are improvisatory elements in Blues music, the chord progression is almost always identical: I--IV-V-I. If you're not musically literate, those roman numerals won't make sense to you, but they're essentially the building blocks of all western art music.

This mirrors, in a lot of ways, the earliest periods of music in Europe that are in the scope of Classical tradition - Gregorian Chant. You know, this stuff:

very harmonically simple, and the words are the most important part. Blues is the same - a repeating chord rhythm, where the words are what differentiate each song.

After this, Classical Music had this intensely complicated period called Baroque. I'm no scholar of Jazz specifically, but as far as I know, Jazz never had a whole lot like that, but this period does have one element in common with baroque - the solidification of group sizes, and the creation of musical "forms"(like blueprints) . In the 1800s, The US gains Louisiana and Florida in a series of diplomatic sales and land grabs. On this land are slaves previously under Spanish and French rule - Creole (some of whom have been absorbing traditions from their owners, or even playing European Classical music to entertain them) -, and a group of people who had been expelled from Upper Canada in the 1700s - Acadians, or as we know them, Cajun. Over time, with lower class intermingling, Blues music begins to absorb all of these traditions. This is where we get this:

At the same time, after the Civil War, dance halls are becoming popular. African Americans, having more free time since, you know, not being slaves, begin to blend their music with dance culture. Musicians, employed to process in funerals, start to form bands.

You'll notice harmony is still pretty simple, but has a little bit more going on. There's even a few short solos. Armstrong was a relic of an older kind of Jazz. Even though he lived a long time, and performed until quite late in life, his style is always very reminiscent of 20's Jazz. Indeed, his style of trumpet playing defined how trumpeters played in Jazz for a long time, until he wasn't cool anymore. Because he was so popular with white audiences, he unintentionally became a kind of "Uncle Tom" figure in jazz late in his life, at which point people really began to pull away from his playing style. Just like Haydn, he started ahead of his time, and ended as a relic.

Cue: The Great War, the subsequent depression, and WW2. Music, and dancing fuelled by Live bands in particular was cheap and popular. Prohibition also helped things along, giving lots of venues for bands to play in. Majority white audiences are starting to catch on to this Jazz thing. Jazz composers such as Ellington start to appear (I'm jumping over a lot here to try to keep this short), and they begin creating larger bands, to give themselves more music tools for composition. To pander to Audiences, "Big Band" jazz is much more... genteel?

Like Beethoven before him, Ellington is not content to simply walk in the back entrance like a servant. He wants for be treated like the musical genius he knows he is. He and his band might be going town to town in beat up old cars, but damn if they don't look fine doing it.

We've moved into Jazz's " romantic period" here (depending on how one defines "romantic period" in classical music) the first threads in the sweater of Jazz's tonality are being pulled, and solos are getting longer, becoming more integral to the music.

After the war, Big bands start to lose steam. Trying to keep a 20-piece band employed is a lot more difficult than keeping a 4-piece employed. When you've just got 4 or 5 dudes, it's also a lot easier to experiment.

Then, just as Jazz is getting intensely chromatic and complicated, it simplifies - Like Classical, it's "neoclassical" period hearkens back to an earlier time. In concept, this piece:

and this piece:

have a lot in common, hearkening back to old music, old traditions. It's reactionary to the increasing chromaticism and complication. the chord progressions are simpler (though still tinged with more modern harmonies) and so are the forms. This strain still exists in a lot of ways, just like neoclassical music never really went away, even through the seriously avant-garde shit.

avant gard shit like this:

and this:

or alteratively this:

(the singing is out of tune on purpose)

It's really in this avant garde stuff that has the elements you're talking about - extreme technicality, "free" chromaticism, and stuff that is kind of hard to understand if you're not steeping yourself in it constantly. A lot of jazz being played right now is not like that - just like a lot of classical Music is not like that.

Regarding Buddy Rich: Buddy Rich was a great drummer. He was also a supreme asshole, who grew up in a time when conductors and band leaders were god when it came to the ensemble. Arturo Toscanini is the most egregious example of this in the 20th century - Messiah Complex if there ever was one. So he acted like God, and bossed a lot of people around. So did Stevie Wonder, so did Billy Joel - They made a lot more money, and were at least as good musicians.

I love quotes that start with "..." as that "..." almost always contradicts things. Let's look at the whole quote, shall we?

Ethnic diversity is increasing in most advanced countries, driven mostly by sharp increases in immigration. In the long run immigration and diversity are likely to have important cultural, economic, fiscal, and developmental benefits. In the short run, however, immigration and ethnic diversity tend to reduce social solidarity and social capital. New evidence from the US suggests that in ethnically diverse neighbourhoods residents of all races tend to ‘hunker down’. Trust (even of one's own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer. In the long run, however, successful immigrant societies have overcome such fragmentation by creating new, cross-cutting forms of social solidarity and more encompassing identities. Illustrations of becoming comfortable with diversity are drawn from the US military, religious institutions, and earlier waves of American immigration.

And a related but tangential quote.

In the text, Faustus is reading the vulgate of Saint Jerome, and comes to Romans 6:23 "The wages of sin is death," he quotes, and stops right there, despairing, without turning the page. Dr. Hempel looked out at the class. "You're all good Christians, right? What's the rest of the verse? What would Faustus have seen if he'd turned the page?" There had been no answer. " 'For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.' Don't you understand? Faustus was eternally damned because he was a bad reader."

It has been known for some years that the problem with microwaved anything is not the radiation people used to worry about, it’s how it corrupts the DNA in the food

Microwave radiation is non-ionizing; it doesn't have high-enough energy to break chemical bonds to affect DNA.

so the body can not recognize it.

The body needs to "recognize" the DNA in food...?? How? Why? If something so bizarre were determined to be true, we'd all have heard about it.

Microwaves don’t work different ways on different substances. Whatever you put into the microwave suffers the same destructive process. Microwaves agitate the molecules to move faster and faster.

This is false; the wavelength of microwave energy is well-suited to heating water molecules. Molecules with substantially different resonant frequencies are not heated much; this is why microwaved food doesn't "brown" like it would in the oven. (Incidentally, products of browning tend to be mild carcinogens.)

This movement causes friction which denatures the original make-up of the substance.

Friction doesn't play into it. The movement itself is heat.

It results in destroyed vitamins, minerals, proteins

Some vitamins are degraded by heating, and some proteins will denature in the microwave (e.g. eggs will be "destroyed" by becoming solid, cheese will be "destroyed" by becoming gooey). However, these are effects of heat, regardless of how it is produced.

and generates the new stuff called radiolytic compounds, things that are not found in nature.

This does occur in nature, but not in a microwave. Again, non-ionizing radiation; it doesn't have enough energy to do that.

So the body wraps it in fat cells to protect itself from the dead food

- microwaves to produce any unique by-products
- once again, there's no way in hell the body needs to recognize the DNA in food to break it down chemically

3). Male and female hormone production is shut down and/or altered by continually eating microwaved foods.

They didn't even bother to fantasize a mechanism for this one. Are they running out of big words they don't even understand?

4). The effects of microwaved food by-products are residual [long term, permanent] within the human body.

That's not what residual means.

5). Minerals, vitamins, and nutrients of all microwaved food is reduced or altered so that the human body gets little or no benefit, or the human body absorbs altered compounds that cannot be broken down.

Just reiterating their previous nonsense.

6). The minerals in vegetables are altered into cancerous free radicals when cooked in microwave ovens.